*Murphy, James (July 31, 2018). [https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/29676-the-censorship-battle-of-alex-jones-and-why-it-affects-us-all The Censorship Battle of Alex Jones and Why It Affects Us All]. ''The New American''. Retrieved August 6, 2018.

*Murphy, James (July 31, 2018). [https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/29676-the-censorship-battle-of-alex-jones-and-why-it-affects-us-all The Censorship Battle of Alex Jones and Why It Affects Us All]. ''The New American''. Retrieved August 6, 2018.

*[https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/computers/item/29739-top-headline-jordan-belanger-deep-state-censoring-voices Top Headline - The Deep State is Censoring Voices That Do Not Agree With Them]. ''The New American''. August 7, 2018. Retrieved August 7, 2018.

Revision as of 20:32, 7 August 2018

Adolf Hitler's rise to power was greatly aided by censoring his critics.[1][2][3][4]

Censorship is the suppression of statements or information for ideological reasons. Current examples of censorship include:

Liberals are actively trying to destroy Fox News Channel through lawsuits and bullying because it disrupts the left-wing narrative, which it does not submit to.[5] They have also tried to destroy Sean Hannity for the same reason.[6]

Facebook suspended 30,000 accounts in France a mere ten days before its national election in 2017, in censorship of supporters of the right-wing, eurosceptic Marine Le Pen[7][8]

Refusal to carry news about the horrors at the abortion clinic of Gosnell Kermit, on trial for murder in April 2013 in Philadelphia

In August 2018, multiple social media giants, with the support of the Left, mainstream media, and Democrats,[19] banned Alex Jones's InfoWars from their sites simply because of his political views.[20]

Political censorship involves a government preventing information from reaching its citizens. Perhaps the best-known contemporary example of this is China's censorship of the Google search engine, known as the "Golden Shield Project", which prevents Google from displaying search results of some human rights websites, websites promoting Tibetan independence, references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and others. A famous example in fiction is George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the main character works as a civil servant in the department responsible for altering or destroying historical information which the government wishes to keep secret. The rationale behind political censorship is that the political party in power can protect itself from revolution if the public is kept uninformed.

The term "censorship" derives from censor, the title of the Roman official who conducted the census and supervised public morality.

Contents

The First Amendment and censorship in the U. S.

In the United States, the First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Broadly speaking, the First Amendment is designed to prevent the government from exercising censorship. However, the government sometimes censors political and religious speech anyway, based on ideological grounds.

More specifically, the government should not exercise "prior restraint." That is, a citizen should not need advance permission from the government in order to publish something, unless it threatens national security. This does not mean that publication may not have consequences: a citizen can be sued for publishing libel, or incarcerated for disclosing military secrets, but the consequences typically occur after publication, not before.

Censorship is sometimes applied to prohibit obscenity that goes against common standards of public morality; under US law the first amendment does not protect material considered legally obscene. The definition of obscenity has and continues to vary, with the current Supreme Court definition being the Miller test. In practical terms, this allows harmful material such as pornography to be criminalized without violating the First Amendment.

Censorship may also be directed at religious ideas, as in the Saudi Arabian prohibition on preaching Christianity, liberal restrictions on public expressions of religion, or the Roman Catholic Church's now-rescinded Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Certain language and images that may have been censored in the past are typically common fare in the American media today. On the other hand, while nudity, for example, may be acceptable on mainstream French television, that is much less likely to be accepted on American television and even less acceptable in Islamic countries.

Quotes

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.George Bernard Shaw[21]